I don't know
if I would use that word," a Microsoft support engineer said.
"What word," I replied innocently.
"You know--that three-letter word you just used."
Of course he wouldn't use it. He's under strict instructions
never to say bug to a customer. In the official parlance of the world's
most powerful software company, when a product is defective, one may speak
delicately of an "issue." This could be a "known issue" or an "intermittent
issue." Then again, it could be a "design side effect" or "undocumented behavior"
or perhaps a "technical glitch." Excuse me while I go powder my nose.
Microsoft has developed a fascinating style of using
language--Microspeak, let's call it--with a refinement, a subtlety, a fine
polish all its own. To understand certain announcements and news releases
issuing from Redmond, Wash., requires rhetorical analysis and possibly a
glossary. The exercise can be worth the effort, though, because after all,
Microsoft is Microsoft. These days, if you don't savvy Microspeak, you're
going to be left behind.
Consider a brief yet artful "Media Alert," released April 16
with the headline, "MSN Doubles E-Mail Capacity." (In slightly different
form,
the
announcement appeared on Microsoft's Web site five days later.) It began,
"Continuing to make the service more useful, MSN, The Microsoft Network,
is doubling its number of e-mail servers." Continuing to make the service . . . (Rule No. 1: Never
lead with bad news. The real reason for this media alert was that e-mail
delivery to the Microsoft Network's 2.2 million customers had failed on a
wide scale over the past weeks, reaching a point of crisis and forcing MSN
to break its silence.) . . . more useful . . . (than what?) . . .
doubling its number of e-mail servers. Of course, this is careful
misdirection. The number of e-mail servers was not the real subject of the
alert. The real subject made its first and last appearance in a subordinate
clause in the following sentence: Responding to a partial e-mail delay
earlier this week . . .
What is a partial e-mail delay? No further comment here, but
the tail end of a second media alert three days later explained: As MSN's
membership grows and becomes more active, we process more and larger e-mail
messages each day. Translation: our systems are overwhelmed by the volume
of mail. Earlier in the week we experienced some intermittent
issues--translation: breakdowns--with our e-mail servers, resulting
in delayed delivery of e-mail for some members . . . delayed, in some
cases, days and even weeks.
With further characteristic touches, the announcement also noted:
No e-mail should have been lost (delicious ambiguity there) during
this upgrade period (don't forget, this is good news!). Emergency workers
in the Mississippi flood plains, throwing sandbags onto the dikes, have
encountered similar upgrade periods and intermittent issues.
In reality, according to users, considerable amounts of e-mail
were lost and the problems have continued, more than a month after these
two brief announcements--which are the only public statements Microsoft has
made on the subject. Microspeak is language with a purpose, and it works,
in a way. The press, both mainstream and technical, has just briefly noted
MSN's e-mail troubles, in contrast to much more heavily publicized problems
at America Online. And unlike America Online, MSN has not offered its users
any refund for the lost service.
And so on. The odd thing is that individuals who work for Microsoft
often have a candid, plain-speaking style. Most of them would be perfectly
capable of saying: "We messed up. Here's what the problem is. We're sorry.
We're going to try to fix it." Somehow the corporate culture has grown in
a different direction. If Microsoft offers software labeled "preview," you
may think you're getting a first look at a finished product. Actually, preview,
in Microspeak, is what blunter software companies call "beta"--meaning
incomplete, buggy, and unsupported. This spring, when the company rushed
out a set of fixes for bugs in the mail software that shipped with Office
97, it dubbed these the "Internet Mail Enhancement Patch."
These are not lies, exactly. They are the form of debased language
that George Orwell called "euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy
vagueness."
"A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow,
blurring the outlines and covering up all the details," he wrote. "The great
enemy of clear language is insincerity." Lately we call this "spin." Perhaps
the Microsoft style seems all the more garish because this great institution
operates not in the sphere of politics or war, where we've grown accustomed
to pacification and collateral damage and plausible deniability, but in the
technical realm, where words usually mean what they say. If what you want
is a half round nose chisel or a dynamic link library entry point function,
you had better call it by its right name.
Microsoft has brought spin "to a high art in the software industry,"
says Peter Deegan, editor of Woody's Office
Watch, an online newsletter for Microsoft users. "The MSN email debacle
reminded me immediately of the story of how the old U.S.S.R. is supposed
to have announced the Chernobyl nuclear accident to the world media." Ah,
Peter, if only. Continuing to respond to users' desire for clean, inexpensive
power, the Soviet Union has accelerated an upgrade of its historic Chernobyl
plant . . .
The company denies, by the way, that its technical-support people
have formal instructions never to say "bug." However, the phrase "known issue"
is preferred, a spokesman said, "due to the complex nature of the word 'bug.' "
This is what happens when you get too comfortable with Microspeak -- known
issue seems simple, while bug seems complex. It is what Orwell saw as
language of orthodoxy, of concealment, of the party line.
"A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology," he wrote, "has gone some distance
toward turning himself into a machine."

By way of follow-up, let me just note that
Microsoft is now trying to protect its right to "innovate."